


Improbable Home

by gnimaerd



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5018422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Absolutely not,” he folds his arms, “naming a human being is a solemn duty – there will be no trifling with websites.”</i> future fic, set some time after the series; Abbie is pregnant, Ichabod frets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Improbable Home

Abbie rocks on the bed in the position Ichabod has learned is most comfortable for her lately, with her legs folded and tucked under her swollen middle, and she hums to herself. It’s 2AM and she can’t sleep – Ichabod has fetched her mint tea, and an antacid, and ice cream (without pointing out that that would seem to somewhat defeat the purpose of the antacid – he has learned that such commentary will get him what Jenny calls ‘the stank eye’). He has rubbed her shoulders, and fetched her a different blanket – the one she prefers – from the den, and warmed her lavender scented wheat bag in the microwave oven, and offered to read to her from Paradise Lost. And still, she cannot sleep.

So now she rocks, and hums, and rubs her belly, whilst Ichabod tries not to pace.

“You are sure there’s nothing wrong?” He asks. “We could call Doctor Reed – he did say – ”

“I’m fine, Crane,” she waves a hand, “I just can’t get comfy.”

“We could call, just to be safe – ”

“It’s the middle of the night. A doctor is not going to get out of bed because an insomniac pregnant lady has acid reflux and a backache,” Abbie ceases rocking momentarily, “stop pacing.”

“I’m not pacing.”

“You’re twitching,” Abbie jabs a finger at him, “you’re like a big old grasshopper over there. Come sit down.”

Ichabod crosses the room, obediently – Abbie takes even less well to disagreement now than she did before she was with-child – and perches on the edge of the bed at her side. She has taken up rocking again, rubbing circles over her swollen abdomen. Apparently, the movement lulls the baby into laying still, which allows her to rest.

She seems impossibly full of the child now – there’s practically more of her belly than there is the rest of her put together. That it must continue to grow for another eight weeks is worrisome: where can she possibly fit anymore?

The whole business of childbearing seems to be, thank God, a great deal safer now than it was in his own time, of course. Ichabod is nothing if not a very thorough man: he has looked up the statistics on maternal and infant mortality rates and checked them all against his own research in order to be certain that they are accurate. He has used his findings to track down the best doctors in the state; he has insisted on inspecting and researching every gadget and utensil to be placed anywhere near his pregnant wife in any medical establishment in the last six months – much to Abbie’s chagrin and occasional begrudging amusement.

Still, Ichabod cannot help but be instinctively fearful of the possibility of calamity. He has known too many women to perish far before their time through the mismanagement of their maternity, or through simple ill-luck – a baby stuck the wrong way round, a rupture, a hemorrhage. However many statistics he looks up, however rare these occurrences might be now, these possibilities loom large in their horrible potential.

Abbie is a very slight woman, and pregnancy so very taxing on even the most robust form – supposing something within her simply breaks under the strain? Grace Abigail Mills has survived far worse things than mere human pregnancy, to be sure, but that only makes the possibility more alarming. To have her life end in this way, having come through so much, and to have it happen because of something he is at least 50% responsible for – well. It hardly bares thinking about.

(Although he does think about it, often. Whilst Abbie sits up at 3AM grumbling that she aches and that she’s hungry and that the baby won’t lay still and let her sleep, Ichabod holds her, soothes her, and worries).

He hasn’t voiced any such fear to Abbie, of course. He would not want to burden her.  

“So we should talk about names, maybe,” Abbie remarks, abruptly – she is rubbing her eyes, bruised from lack of sleep, her mouth taking on a thoughtful twist.

“Yes. Babies tend to need names.” He agrees, shaking himself of such forboding thoughts for the moment, easing closer to her side – and Abbie smiles, briefly, touching his knee, just a little tentatively.

They have not yet truly discussed naming their child. Early on in her pregnancy Abbie had confessed a certain superstition to him: “If we name it, then it’s real – and then if I lose it, I’ll have – I’ll have lost a real someone,” Abbie, patting the hardly-there round of her stomach after her first doctor’s appointment, in the car, avoiding his gaze, chewing her lip. “I’ll have lost a real kid, a real baby. My real baby. And I can’t – I don’t – I don’t know how to do that, not right now.”

And truth be told Ichabod had not been eager to have the discussion, either. The ghost of Jeremy breathes something deathly in the back of his head, not often, mercifully, but enough to turn him uneasy around the more salient aspects of there really being a child, his own child, at the end of this endeavor.

“We could look online – at one of those naming websites,” Abbie inclines her head at him, and he can see by the knowing light in her eyes that she’s teasing him. Still, he offers the reaction he knows she wants.

“Absolutely not,” he folds his arms, “naming a human being is a solemn duty – there will be no trifling with websites. It’s hardly as if such innovations have aided your generation in finding suitable names with which to christen their children – what on earth is a ‘Neveah’ when it’s at home?”

“Tell me about it, _Ichabod_.” She prods him in the ribs and he bats her off.

“Ichabod is an ancient Hebrew name, most likely meaning ‘the glory has departed Israel,’” he informs her, with as much dignity as he can muster under her gentle amusement. “It is mentioned in the Book of Samuel. Most of us born at the time had our names drawn from the Bible. Our child is lucky she is not to be born to Puritans, who tended toward saddling their offspring with entire phrases.”

“Of yeah? Like what?”

“As a child I had a play-fellow whose full name read _If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned_ ,” Ichabod replies, drawing a disbelieving giggle out of Abbie, “although he insisted that I call him Nicholas. His brother was named _Humiliation_.”

Abbie is still giggling, “poor kid.”

“He was rather a dour child,” Ichabod recalls, distractedly. “I suspect ours will be thankful that such traditions are no longer in fashion.”

“Don’t know about her, but I certainly am,” Abbie rubs the swollen round of her belly emphatically. “Still, we gotta come up with something.”

“We do indeed.”

She nudges him, gently. “You got any suggestions, there, Crane?”

“Just one,” which is true. It came to him the moment he was shown the image of their unborn daughter, floating impossibly on a dark screen: a small, distinct profile, a nose and chin undoubtedly Abbie’s. Of all the marvels and miracles of this age, that one has profoundly outstripped any other. “Grace. For her lady mother, and noble ancestor.”

Abbie’s eyes widen for a moment, then she bites her lip. “You wanna name our kid after me?”

“I cannot think of a more worthy legacy to bestow upon her,” Ichabod replies, gently. “Can you?”

Abbie casts her gaze down from a moment, the delicate play of emotions behind her eyes perhaps too much to immediately share with him – Ichabod has learned to be patient with her guardedness, and read the quality of her silences. This one is touched, and pleased.

“Grace.” She considers, placing both her hands on her stomach as if consulting the child herself on the matter. “Grace. Gracie. Grace Mills-Crane.”

“Do you think it unsuitable?” He watches her expression, her brow furrowing.

“No,” Abbie glances up, mouth twitching, “just testing it out. Sounds nice, though, doesn’t it? Grace Mills-Crane.”

“Yes,” he agrees, feeling more relief than he quite expected. “Yes, it has a pleasant ring to it. A hopeful one.”

Abbie lays a hand on his thigh, patting affectionately. “I like Grace. We can keep that. We should look at others, though, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“Well, maybe she won’t look like a Grace when she comes out,” Abbie shrugs, “maybe she’ll look more like a – Joy. Or Charlotte. Or – Jessica – Julia – Madalyn.”

“How can a child look like a specific name?” He demands, baffled, and Abbie tosses her hair back with a quick, easy smile.

“I don’t know – but you look exactly like an Ichabod to me,” she gives his jaw an affectionate pat. “I like Grace. Grace is on the list.”

“We have a list?”

“We do now.” She grabs a notepad from the bedside table, and a pen, inscribing the number ‘1’ and ‘Grace’ at the top of a page which she promptly tears off, clambering off the bed to pin the page to the wall by the bedroom door. “And when we come up with others we both like, they go on the list. For comparison.”

“Fair enough.”

But the list doesn’t grow. They consider a handful of alternative suggestions – Jennifer, August, Lori – but Lori is too loaded with emotion, with sadness, with fear. Abbie likes August but also can’t shake the image that the name conjures up, of his headless body slumped in a scarlet pool on the muddy earth. Not a legacy for a child to inherit.

 And Jenny outright vetoes them naming the baby after her: “No. No way. Jennifer is boring as hell, I hated my name growing up – don’t you remember that time I spent like six months trying to convince everyone to call me Aaliyah?”

Abbie rolls her eyes, and Jenny leans over the sofa to put both hands on her sister’s pregnant belly, leaning close, addressing the child. “I’m doing you a favour in there, you hear me? This is your favourite aunt talking.”

“You’re her only aunt, Jenny.”

“Well, just making sure.”

So a week later, Abbie goes into labour with no other names on the list – and when she’s born, Grace Aaliyah Mills-Crane looks exactly like Grace Aaliyah Mills-Crane, and Abbie is tired and sore but well, and the baby is healthy, and Ichabod feels he has witnessed a miracle.

“You know I hear if you pick them up, they stop doing that,” Abbie tells him, from the bed, whilst Ichabod hovers over the crib placed in their hospital room, his daughter squalling pitifully inside a cocoon of blankets.

“I am…” Ichabod hesitates, “unsure of how to proceed.”

“Pick up your daughter, Crane,” Abbie leans back against her pillows with a soft, tired smile. “She’s not gonna explode.”

“Suppose I hurt her?” Ichabod lays a tentative hand on the tiny flailing body in the crib – his palm alone spans her entire chest. “She is… very small.”

“You won’t. You held her before.”

“She was placed into my arms by a nurse,” Ichabod points out.

“Ichabod,” Abbie’s voice is gentle, her gaze tender, “pick up our kid.”

So Ichabod slips one hand beneath his daughter’s head and the other beneath her body, and gathers her up – hastily pressing her to his chest, where it feels safest to hold her. She makes snuffling, confused baby-bird sounds and peers blearily at him, unfocused and soft and oh – she looks like her mother, for which Ichabod is profoundly grateful. Had he seen too much of himself – if he had caught even the hint of Jeremy – in this child, he’s not sure how he would have been able to stand it.

She has ceased wailing and now seems only mildly inconvenienced by his failure to be Abbie, screwing up her tiny face and fists, little legs kicking erratically.

 “Hello,” he remarks, to the baby, who blinks back at him and works her little mouth open and closed. “I believe she might be hungry? She seems hungry.”

“Yeah,” Abbie is watching them with something unreadable in her gaze, warm and ineffable, “we better get used to that.”

He brings the baby over to the bed, and seats himself next to her, and Abbie cups their child’s feet in one of her hands – when she first held her, some hours ago now, Abbie had touched her fingers similarly: awed, almost disbelieving.

“We made a really cute kid, huh?” Abbie murmurs, glancing up at Ichabod, her lips curling upwards into a slow, contented smile.

“Though I suppose any new parent must feel thus,” Ichabod opines, firmly, “I am strongly of the belief that ours is the single most beautiful child on the planet. Thanks in no small part to a strong resemblance to her mother.”

Abbie giggles, resting her head on his should as she catches one tiny flailing fist in her own. “Yeah. Yeah, I reckon so.”

Ichabod kisses Abbie, gently, her small form whole and healthy, still, at his side, and their infant daughter real in his arms, and believes he would walk through ten – twenty – one hundred more apocalypses for this moment, for this family, this improbable home. And Abbie squeezes his arm and breathes him in, her forehead resting against his for a moment, and he knows she feels the same way.

Then Jenny’s barging into the room with an armful of gaudily coloured helium filled balloons on ribbons, telling them to “break it up, love birds, you’ll traumatise the kid!” and demanding to see her new niece, and Joe Corbin is trailing behind her looking bashful and carrying flowers – and there is merriment and joy for hours after.


End file.
